You have the airtime. How are you going to use it wisely? There are many reasons for wanting to tell your story. Here are some of them:

• Your company has developed a new product or service that is evolutionary or revolutionary in nature.
• You represent a non-profit organization that has a meaningful story to tell.
• You’re a politician with an issue and message you want to communicate.
• Your company has developed some useful consumer tips that deserve media coverage.
• You're an author in need of a powerful and effective way to communicate your book in a compelling and crystallized fashion.
• You’re a celebrity advocating a certain cause…or movie or tv show you want to promote.

These are only some of the reasons a company or individual may get television airtime and need a trainer's help to prepare. As a soon-to-become on-air personality, you will have just a few minutes in front of TV viewers. You must be equipped with media savvy to make a favorable impression.

Media interview training helps professionals become more skilled and confident on TV. The best training sessions are personalized, with the instructor concentrating on the particular style of each participant, along with that participant's specific organizational messages and problem areas. Such sessions provide guidelines and techniques for enhancing interview effectiveness and often include videotapes illustrating the right and wrong way to interview. They also put each participant through a series of videotaped interview situations, which are played back and critiqued.

LESSON ONE: How to Take Control

The way people handle interviews reflects in large part the way they handle life. They either lead or follow. Those who reach their goals take initiative and create their own agendas.

Henry Kissinger is a master at controlling interviews, especially when he was secretary of state. He was once overheard asking confidently at a morning news conference, "Does anyone have any questions for my answers?" Kissinger knows how to prepare for interviews. He was pre-programmed to make each an opportunity to say what he wanted to say.

Carve Out Communications Objectives or Copy Points

Interviewees should be prepared with one or two clear messages they want to convey to viewers. It's much better to repeat points than to deluge an audience with information they'll be unable to retain. Television viewers have only one chance to get a message; they can't go back and reread an opening statement. So the simpler the message, the higher the retention rate.

Plan the Timing of Copy Points

Interviewees are always amazed at how quickly on-air time passes; they must be prepared for that. They must lead with their strongest point first, continue through the interview, sense when they've come to the near-close, then make their second most important point. Why? Research shows that what is said at the beginning and end of an interview is what viewers retain best.

Develop Key Questions

This involves anticipating and making a list of the kinds of questions most likely to be asked - including the toughest ones - and planning the most appropriate answers for each of those questions. Interviewees must identify their most vulnerable areas and focus on them, preparing an honest and forthright response for each question.

Turn Negatives into Positives

Sometimes reporters' questions can be a bridge to interviewees communications objectives. Sometimes there's a natural transition. Usually, though, some advance planning is needed if interviewees want a chance to convey their key idea. That's especially true when their organization is involved in a controversial situation.

Interviewees need to prepare for sensitive areas where negative questions must be turned around. With advance planning they can succeed in using negative questions as bridges to their communications objectives. They can make this transition from negative to positive by responding directly to negative questions, then continuing their answers by developing positive statements containing their communications objective.


LESSON TWO: How to Achieve Credibility

It's quite possible for interviewees to be in control, to be well groomed and well prepared, and yet fail at their communications task. Why? Because they simply don't achieve credibility. The audience doesn't believe what they're saying. Many variables affect credibility. Studies show that there are as many as 35 such variables, including everything from age to sex to appearance. Clearly, people can't control such things as their age and sex. But they can control other factors and can gauge them by what might be called "the barometer of reality."

Picture this barometer as having three critical levels: rapport, communication, and energy. The interviewee's credibility - or the interviewer's and audience's sense of the interviewee's realness - is at its peak when all three levels are reached.

Rapport

Good rapport on the interviewee's part includes a perception that he or she is likable and caring. One way interviewees can establish good rapport with the audience and the interviewer is to humanize themselves and their organization. This can be done by relating personal anecdotes that enhance their point of view. Interviewees should talk in terms of people rather than statistics, and speak in personal terms. It helps viewers identify with the person speaking, and in turn, identify with the message.

Another route to good rapport is by way of first names. Think about the warmth and charm of the late President Reagan. Whether you agreed with his policies or not, his soft but charismatic style, his likeability, his conversational tones and his ability to communicate in simple yet graphic imagery – all of this “reached” viewers and “scored points” with them.

Think about the late Egyptian prime minister, Anwar El-Sadat, whose skill in conducting the warm and human interview greatly increased the prestige of his office and affection for him. Why were Mr. Sadat's interviews on television so believable? Quite simply, because he succeeded in identifying himself in the minds of the audience as a friend of the interviewer. One way he accomplished this was by skillful use of first names - by calling Barbara Walters "Barbara" and Walter Cronkite "Walter." This subtle recognition of the interviewer as a person creates the image of a warm, caring, courteous individual. There's a suggestion that the interviewer and the guest are friends.

Interviewees should use their judgment in applying this suggestion to specific cases. If in doubt, they might ask the reporter or host before the interview begins whether he or she would mind being called by his or her first name.

Empathizing and acknowledging the other person's viewpoint, without necessarily agreeing with it, is a great way to eliminate communication barriers. If interviewees create a cordial comfort zone with the show host, the "vibes" will be picked up by the people on the other side of the screen - the people they're really intending to reach. Interviewees who let reporters upset them only promote unfavorable impressions in the minds of the thousands - or millions - viewing.

Communication

This refers to how well an interviewee expresses his or her expertise and knowledge to the interviewer. One way of boosting communication is the use of short words and simple sentences, which keep the tone conversational and informal. Interviewees should make special efforts to avoid jargon that may be unfamiliar to the average viewer. A natural quality makes interviewees more believable.

Believability is also affected by how interviewees handle questions they don't understand or can't answer. They should never try to muddle through an unclear topic; they should instead ask for a clarification before responding. It's not a mistake for interviewees to admit they don't know the answer when that, in fact, is the case.

Another communicator is dress. Interviewees should dress well, but not to the point of distraction. What they wear should never get in the way of what they say.

Somewhere on this communication level of the barometer lies attitude, tone, and composure, those nonverbal signals that tell so much about people and their message. The more interviewees rehearse and find that perfect degree of comfort, the better those signals become.

Energy

This barometer level is as vital as the first two. Interviewees should apply the appropriate level of energy to their subject and to the interviewer's style. This energy level should remain somewhere between that of the screaming TV-commercial huckster and that of the dull, absentminded professor.

Two of the true tellers of energy level are voice volume and tone. Nothing is more boring than a soft-spoken monotone. Similarly, nothing is likely to telegraph hostility and insecurity more quickly than a voice pitched too high.

Adherence to the barometer of reality will help interviewees be perceived as credible. But again, the best way for people to appear credible is simply to be credible: to tell the truth and to be themselves.


LESSON THREE: How to Confront Crisis And Hostility

The best-trained interviewee can panic when a hostile confrontation or a crisis erupts. Emotions can run hot because the stakes are so high. At these times it's more important than ever for an interviewee to stay cool. Following are some tried and true ways interviewees can maneuver themselves through storms.

Keep the Problem in Perspective

Interviewees should contrast today's corporate failure with past successes. Another way to create perspective is through analogies. If other credible organizations experienced similar or worse situations in weathering their storms, it's useful to remind people about that. Perspective cannot eliminate the bad news, but it can help soften the blow.

Pay Attention to Company Positioning

Johnson & Johnson got through both Tylenol crises by communicating the message "we are victims too." This tactic proved successful in winning support and sympathy for the company. In addition to following this example, interviewees should never look back. That only opens the possibility of rehashing past problems and grievances. They should adopt a "what's-done-is-done" stance, then communicate the need to move forward in a positive way.

Show Compassion

Interviewees must display genuine concern for people adversely affected by corporate situations, whether they are laid-off employees or people who've experienced the ill effects of a product.

Be Consistent

Everyone who speaks for the corporation must speak with the same voice. Spokespeople must convey the same message of strength. Failure to do so will create a chink in the armor, and the media will be quick to spot and seize that opening.

In crisis situations, there's no such thing as "no comment." Watergate taught the world that "no comment" is a tacit admission of guilt. Interviewees must avoid ducking issues and must never try to sweep problems under the rug. Such actions give the media a green light to go for the jugular. Speaking honestly can defuse many negative perceptions.

Learn How to Handle Hostile Interviewers

While the well-trained executive will know how to proceed in a crisis before that crisis erupts, he or she still may not be prepared for another anxiety-provoking experience: an encounter with a hostile interviewer. Interviewees must learn how to handle unprofessional interviewers who may fit any one of several hostile types.

Types of Hostile Interviewers

By and large, television interviewers do not seek an adversarial relationship with their guests. In some circumstances, though, interviewees may find themselves facing hosts who view them as opponents. Good media training includes preparation in handling any of several hostile interviewers.

The Machine Gunner

This interviewer will often fire off an entire series of questions, then sit back to watch the interviewee squirm. The way to handle this is to answer only one question - the one that can best be used to make a transition to the interviewee's own communication objective. No one is obligated to perform verbal gymnastics by answering every single question.

The Interrupter

Interviewees have two choices when dealing with the interrupter. They can stop, listen patiently to the new questions, suggest that they'll address that topic in a moment, and continue their thought with "As I was saying..." Or they can ignore the interruption, complete their thought, and then address the interviewer with "Now, you asked me something else. What was it again?" In either case the interviewee keeps the initiative and retains control.

The Paraphraser

The paraphraser is the antagonistic interviewer who incorrectly (and unfairly) restates everything interviewees say, subtly altering their responses. They should deal with this by patiently correcting the interviewer and restating their case.

The Dart Thrower

Probably the most dangerous type of interviewer, the dart thrower attempts to convict interviewees by innuendo. Interviewees should never answer a dart thrower's question without first addressing the innuendo. Ignoring it is a sign of acceptance. Interviewees should say something like "Just a minute, David, before I respond to your question, I must object to the form in which it was addressed..." No hostile comment should go unanswered.


LESSON FIVE: What To Do On Arrival

The studio environment is unique. Interviewees should arrive a little early to get used to it. This will help keep them from becoming distracted or intimidated by the unfamiliar sights and sounds once the interview begins. Floor managers will be throwing cues. Cameras will be moving from place to place. And most distracting of all, the interviewer will be looking at notes and checking the clock for station breaks - in general, looking at everyone and everything but the interviewee. None of this should throw interviewees. They must keep right on talking, looking at the interviewer even if the look is not returned.

Above all it's essential that interviewees be natural and feel confident. With a clear and perhaps enlarged self-image, the interviewee presents the most effective image - and message - to the outside world.

_____________________________________________
Mike Schwager is President of Worldlink Media Consultants, Inc., based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He is an accomplished veteran of media interview training, and has conducted successful trainings for scores of CEO’s and other senior executives, politicians, celebrities and authors. Website: http://www.mediamavens.com. E-mail: [email]michael@mediamavens.com[/email].

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